Book of the week

David Wagner : Confronting Homelessness - Poverty, Politics, and the Failure of Social Policy

Photo: MESZL


Who is blameable for homelessness?  What are the different tendencies of the conditions and number of homelessness referable to?

54 people froze to death in Hungary last year, from October to the end of the year; part of this number does not include human destiny (life) of homeless people, however, defencelessness of those living without home still persists, it is a serious problem - their defencelessness to weather conditions, mainly in winter months.
It is true that the number of homeless people in Hungary decreased in the last few years, but their conditions and chances are more and more hopeless year by year.  In Hungary,  homeless policy can be characterized as the issue approached by law enforcement and  criminalising aspect instead of social one; these kinds of approach originate in the era of state socialism.

David Wagner (University of Southern Maine), the author of  Book of the week offers a major reconsideration of homelessness in the United States, casting a critical eye on how we as a society respond to crises of inequality and stratification. Incorporating local studies into a national narrative, he explores how homelessness shifted from being the subject of a politically charged controversy over poverty and social class to posing a functional question of social-service delivery. At the heart of Wagner's analysis is a provocative insight into why we accept highly symbolic policies that dampen public outrage, but fail to address the fundamental structural problems that would allow real change; it seems to have no particular solution in the long run, the possible solution is when the problems of homelessness are observed in their context.

(After the library is reopened, the volumes of the book reviews uploaded on Mondays will be available in Free Access Area, at the table marked "New Foreign Books on Sociology".  Relevant regulations can be seen on library website:  http://fszek.hu/)

Sources and more readings:

https://24.hu/.../01/06/fagy-halal-kihules-magyarorszag/

https://g7.hu/.../kevesebb-a-hajlektalan-de-egyre.../

Társadalmi riport 2020  (Social report 2020):  https://www.tarki.hu/tarsadalmi-riport#2020

https://www.amazon.com/Confronting.../dp/1626373914

https://merce.hu/.../magyarorszagon-csokken-a.../